Borrego Springs

Borrego Springs is the only town inside Anza-Borrego Desert State Park, and it is surrounded on every side by it, which is the reason for its two peculiarities. The first is the dark. With no city beyond the park to throw light, and a town that adopted lighting rules to keep it that way, Borrego Springs was certified an International Dark Sky Community in 2009 and remains California's only one. On a moonless night in winter the Milky Way is bright enough to read the ground by.

The second is the sculptures. Scattered across the private Galleta Meadows land around town stand more than a hundred and thirty welded metal works by the artist Ricardo Breceda: mammoths and ground sloths and sabertooth cats drawn from the fossil record of these badlands, alongside horses, a jeep, a scorpion, and a serpent several hundred feet long that dives in and out of the sand across a road. There is no gate, no fee, and no schedule. You drive the loop and find them.

The town itself is small and low-key, with a handful of restaurants, a couple of lodges, and a grocery. Everything runs on the season: full in wildflower spring, quiet and hot from June through September, with plenty of places closing outright for the summer.